Linguistic Final

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Intervention Discrimination and Employment

Name

School

Ling 472

Professor

Intervention Discrimination and Employment

Discrimination is an everyday reality where we face all sources of discrimination at the workplace or as we walk in the streets. This does not mean it is right for people to be discriminated against. There are different forms of discrimination, like linguistic discrimination. Linguistic discrimination is discrimination based on accent. It is the unjust treatment of people based on their native language or other aspects of their linguist abilities (Craft et al., 2020). It is the unfair treatment of a person based on the characteristics of their speech, such as accent, vocabulary size, and syntax. Linguistic discrimination can explain the huge differences in employment gaps among different races in the United States. Minority races face discrimination when seeking employment opportunities due to their linguistic abilities. The unemployment rate of African Americans is 11.4% in 2020 due to discrimination based on their accent (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). Awareness-raising is an intervention that can help reduce discrimination against others based on their accent.

Awareness Raising

Raising awareness is one of the oldest forms of trying to change the behavior of society. It involves educating the people while trying to initiate change through behavioral and attitude change. In most cases, people believe in something based on their knowledge over the years, including being passed on from parents or guardians. Most of the time, the knowledge may be wrong but has an adverse impact on the attitude and behavior of the person. Their knowledge of something having passed down generations may not reflect the true picture of the subject or issue. Therefore, raising awareness tries to change the person's attitude, beliefs, and behavior by informing them and educating them on the topic or issue. The new knowledge gained by the person is supposed to influence their attitude and behavior. This will lead to having new ideologies which are true.

Raising awareness can be a successful initiative when well planned and implemented. Raising awareness can be used as an advocacy tool to help in convincing policy makers of the urgency of a certain issue. Raising awareness can be used to help educate people about topics or issues and encourage them to participate in bringing change (Voirol et al., 2021). There are two thoughts behind raising awareness. The two thoughts can effectively bring change to the society facing an issue.

The current issue of discrimination can be fought by raising awareness. Very few people can define discrimination based on the accent of the person. This is because explaining this form of discrimination is a complex process. Those who discriminate against others based on their accents mostly do it out of fear. Therefore, the intervention is to help educate those who are unaware that discriminating against others based on their accent is wrong and can hurt their employment opportunities. Some of those discriminated against due to their accents are highly qualified. Companies may miss out on the best talent due to this form of discrimination. The education should be about how minority communities suffer from this type of discrimination due to a lack of employment opportunities.

The Goal of Raising Awareness

The main goal of raising awareness on the issue of linguistic discrimination and its impact on employment is to educate the people. People make better choices when they know what can aid in decision-making. They can make better decisions when they are made aware of aspects that can aid them. The education will help change attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs (Ones, 2005). They will start shunning the vice of discrimination and embrace better beliefs and attitudes.

It is difficult to change the habit of the public, especially when dealing with an issue that is deeply rooted. However, raising awareness aims at achieving long-lasting behavioral changes among the people. Reaching out to the public regularly will make people aware that discrimination is a problem that needs solving. This will not be easy as discrimination campaigns have run for over fifty years, yet the issue is still rampant. The public must be educated on the adverse long-term impact of linguistic discrimination on employment.

Target Audience

One of the reasons why discrimination has been rampant is because some of the fears of discrimination have been passed down from generations. Breaking the cycle will help stop the issue of linguistic discrimination and its impact on employment. The target audience will be two generations, millennials and generation Z. These two generations are tech-savvy and different from each other. They are in management and can be used to effect change in their companies as they help end linguistic discrimination. They can be used to break the cycle and enable the longterm solution to the issue of discrimination. The support of the millennials will be required as they are the more mature audience.

Resources

Some of the resources needed will include human, technical, financial, and material. Human resources are the most effective in advocacy. People are supposed to play a key role in influencing others. This will be done through education. Therefore, human resources should be able to educate the masses on the issue. Some of them should be tech-savvy to help in setting systems to be used. The use of technology will help in reaching huge numbers of people. A resource center is needed to help in collecting data on the impact of linguistic racism on employment. The data should show how minority races, especially those with accents not regarded as standard American English, are discriminated against.

Media to be Used

Over the years, several mediums have been used to raise awareness. Some of the most common and popular include newspapers, articles, television, and radio. Newspaper and writing articles are the oldest forms still being used today. They involve writing about the topic or issue and educating the people. Television and radio have been effective as they allow engaging the audience on the topic and issue. When the audience is engaged, they can learn new things, which effectively influence behavioral and attitude change. The various advancements in technology like the internet and social media present other forms of mediums to raise advocacy.

Social media is the most popular form of media, growing extraordinarily over the last decade. More people are active on social media today than there were five years ago. It is estimated that in 2020, there will be 3.6 billion active social media users (Statista, 2021). This is a big crowd to be engaged with when raising awareness on the current issues. The choice of social media as a medium of engaging the people matches the audience's choice. Millennials and

Generation Z are active members of social media tools, making it easier to raise awareness.

Social media tools have also grown, making it easier to contact people.

Social media can create a platform for sharing stories, and photos, providing facts and data, engaging the audience, and helping them understand (Wu et al., 2018). The use of social media will help create a community around the issue. The public will be made aware of the issue with stories being shared by the victims, data and facts being shared, and the audience is engaged. Those who do not understand the issue are given a chance to ask questions and understand the issue to help break the cycle.

The use of hashtags has proved to be popular over the years in raising awareness. The hashtag #endlinguisticdiscrimination can ensure more people understand linguistic discrimination and its impact on employment opportunities. The hashtag can be used on all the social media tools to raise awareness of the issue. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are among the most popular social media tools.

References

Craft, J. T., Wright, K. E., Weissler, R. E., & Queen, R. M. (2020). Language and discrimination: Generating meaning, perceiving identities, and discriminating outcomes. Annual Review of Linguistics, 6, 389-407.

Ones, D. S. (2005). Personality at work: Raising awareness and correcting misconceptions. Human Performance, 18(4), 389-404.

Statista. (2021). Social Media & User Generated Content. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/markets/424/topic/540/social - media - user - generated content/#overview

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021). Labor Force Characteristics based on Race and Ethnicity, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race - and ethnicity/2020/home.htm

Voirol, C., Pelland, M. F., Lajeunesse, J., Pelletier, J., Duplain, R., Dubois, J., ... & Audetat, M.

C. (2021). How Can We Raise Awareness of Physician’s Needs in Order to Increase

Adherence to Management and Leadership Training?. Journal of Healthcare Leadership, 13, 109.

Wu, Y., Xie, L., Huang, S. L., Li, P., Yuan, Z., & Liu, W. (2018). Using social media to strengthen public awareness of wildlife conservation. Ocean & Coastal

Management, 153, 76-83.